Pastor's Weekly Update

JANUARY 26, 2023

Lakeshore Friends—

When I saw the headline, I thought it was clickbait or simply a quote taken out of context.  But it was neither.  I don’t want to single out the individual, so let me just say that a fairly well-known personality died recently.  And just one day before he died, he sent out a Tweet in reference to heaven that said, “I heard the place is overrated…”

Hmmm.

If he really meant that, and assuming his life meshed with that attitude, I guess he will be second-guessing that line for all of eternity.  How tragic!

That Tweet made me think that there are so many people who have such a cavalier attitude about the afterlife, about heaven, about hell, and about the reality of the judgment that awaits all people when they die (Hebrews 9:27).  There’s only two eternal realities on the other side, and yet so many people operate with either a smug arrogance that they know for certain that neither place exists (perhaps based on a few selective Google searches or whatever convenient reasons they may have) or, perhaps more insidiously, they reimagine some fanciful concept of each that differs markedly from what the Bible says each is like, along with what the Bible says is required for entrance into the more desirable one of the two (to be perfectly clear, that would be heaven).

And with every passing day, more and more people embrace this horrifying view.  They think heaven is overrated.

We have two choices.  We can talk about how awful this is.  And it is absolutely awful that people think this way, but that is a non-productive response.  The other choice is that we can help people discover the truth of heaven and help them seek and find it through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

"...THE REALITY IS THAT JUST ONE SECOND IN HEAVEN WILL REMIND EVERYONE JUST HOW UNDERRATED HEAVEN REALLY IS."

That’s what Lakeshore is all about.  We try to focus more on shining the light of Jesus’ love onto the lives of others instead of simply cursing the darkness and remaining in some cloistered holy huddle of avoidance.  We can be in the world, and yet remain unlike the prevailing views of the world at the same time (1 John 2:15-17).

So let’s all show the love of Jesus to others and invite them to church and to faith in Jesus.  Because the reality is that just one second in heaven will remind everyone just how underrated heaven really is.

Warmly,
Vince